On shaving...

Almost every bloke does it - shave, that is ;) Blokes with beards (I used to have one before my heart attack, got rid of it because of the Living History hobby I joined afterwards) tend not to shave, as growing a beard takes more than a day ;)

So... having originally used an electric razor, and received much in the way of shaving burn from that each day, a while back I tried wet shaving. Much better. However, it's getting expensive. I currently use a Gillette Mach 3 razor. Excellent bit of kit, I have to say, but the blade cartridges for it are hellishly expensive - close to a tenner for a five cartridge pack. NOT good at all.

The "Retro" aspect...

Then I remembered that my old man uses a "Safety Razor". These are those old double bladed jobs that you see a lot of the previous generation using. I did a little research (searching online), and found that while the razors themselves can be an initially expensive purchase, the blades on the other hand tend to be cheap as chips (have you SEEN the price of fish'n'chips lately?!) - put it this way: The blades for these things can be as much as five times cheaper over the course of a year than my Mach 3 razor! In these hardening times of economic paucity - i.e. we're all bloody skint! - it makes sense to get something that's relatively cheap to use. It's also apparently "Retro" to use a DB Razor these days. Hmm. Not such a great selling point for me, but what the hell.

So, thinks I... time to change...

Problem. It would appear that you can only find these damn things online nowadays.

For something that I'm looking to use every day for many years, that is designed to put a very sharp bit of metal against my skin, I am damn well not going to simply buy online. I want to feel the blasted thing, get an idea of it's heft in my mitt, how manoeuvrable it is, what the workmanship is like, what it actually looks like in person rather than in an optimised advertising photo, and so on, before I part with my money.

So.

I want an old-fashioned bricks and mortar shop to go to, in order to buy the first one of these that I'll use.

Can I bleedin' find one?

Can I heck. I even spent most of a day stomping around the West End in London trying to find one. All I got for my trouble was somewhat damp (it rained, and naturally I'd forgotten my blasted umbrella), sore of leg (I drive for a living. This walking malarkey's for the full-time pedestrians!) and exceedingly irritated through lack of progress. It's like trying to find rocking horse droppings, this. So, it's over to you, the reader of this blant...

Anyone know of a good men's grooming supplies shop in the London area (that's within the M25 area)?

Let me know through the comments system on here - many thanks in advance!

Edit: It appears Gillette no longer make Double Edge Razors. They still make the blades, but not the razors. Instead, they make a mint selling razors and accessories that utilise their proprietary-design multi-blade cartridges (as do a lot of the other razor and razor blade manufacturers, I should add). So much for minimising waste and making recycling easier.

I suppose it's escaped their attention that, in addition to the Environmentally responsible side of this (ease of recycling), "Retro" is "cool" again, has it?